Over the coming weeks we will probably see plenty of figures released by the Government and Revenue telling us how many people have returned their Property Tax forms. As at May 27th – a figure of “around 1.35 million was being quoted .

The worrying thing is – that the government don’t seem to know exactly how many property tax returns to expect.
We were told that there are 1.9 million residential properties in the country. (That matches the 2012 Census figure)
But we are then informed by Revenue that they issued 1.29 million LPT forms in respect of 1.66 million properties. (This figure included the 60,000 sent via the Revenue Online Service (ROS).
We can probably assume that the 127,000 Local Authority houses (approximate) were not sent forms – because they will be filing returns electronically in bulk.
It is also possible that the 27000 homes owned by voluntary housing providers were not issued forms because they might be treated in the same way as local authorities.

Every other home should have had an LPT form issued – even if a property is exempt it still needs the exemption to be notified on the form.

So – by our calculation there should be at least 1.836 million property tax returns from private homes (Total of 1.99 million homes minus 154000 LA and voluntary housing) . That’s 176,000 more than the 1.66 million figure given by Revenue. Revenue did say that many owners will not have been sent forms – and those people will need to register online or ask Revenue to send them a form.

In the breakdown of the numbers of Property Tax forms issued by Revenue it was revealed that LPT forms were issued to 154,000 people identified as owning multiple properties. The number of properties involved was 470,000 (thats an average of 3 per person).

Interestingly – figures from the NPPR in 2012 showed that 183,551 owners paid the NPPR on just 340,552 properties . (These are properties thay own but don’t live in themselves).

The government is expecting €250 million in Property Tax in 2013 and €500 million in 2014 – but what was that figure based on – 1.99 million homes or 1.66 million ?